The Government Inspector – Marylebone Theatre
Government inspector? I hardly know ‘er! Those familiar with Gogol’s work via other translations or adaptations will be surprised to find this story transplanted from Imperial Russia into a farcical and fanciful imagining of Victorian England. Top hats tip, feathers flail, and breeches bust as the rambunctious set populating this unspecified vaguely historical small provincial town bob and blunder all over each other. There is no gag this cast is likely to sneer at with steady, practical stage violence, direct comic address to spectators, and even the launching of a cabbage into the melee all being paraded under the audience’s nose. The cynical heart of the play, although invoked in a couple of jarring directorial choices, never quite manages to fight its way to the surface of the burbling...